Challenges

The rising disparity in healthcare access is giving rise to endemic/chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in rural India that includes respiratory problems (COPD), cancer, cardiovascular problems, and diabetes. As the biggest healthcare challenge of India today is not only the acute shortage of doctors and beds but also the affordability of treatments . In such a scenario, data analytics can go a long way in improving the quality&affordability of treatments across regions.

How it works

iKure through its in-house developed low-cost data analysis technology is able to capture, collect and process different types of data including biological samples, medical statistics and medical imaging data even at the last mile. As various demographic, behavioural and clinical data becomes part of the WHIMS module, it holds great potential to understand how inherent genetic variants contribute to certain genetic diseases that are commonly found in the community. iKure team collects insights into community activities and relationships by observing ingestion habits, hygiene, sanitation practices, lifestyle and livelihood patterns of the community members and leveraging these insights, iKure works with global research partners to understand the root cause of diseases and design holistic healthcare solutions that cannot be cured only by medication.

Thus, descriptive, diagnostic, operational, predictive and prescriptive analytical values can be used fruitfully to mitigate future risks, and provide better understanding of rare disease propagation. Such insights with regards to gender, age, ethnicity & geography locations etc, can quantify the relationship between disease pattern, their occurrence and healthcare access in the region. The outcome of such data base can lead to improved health services and health related information for timelier and actionable health care initiatives.

In view of the privacy challenges related to Data access, iKure is using anonymization algorithm to effectively preserve both patient’s privacy and data utility. iKure's data anonymization ensures balance between data utility and required participant data privacy. iKure is also using high security measures for the Data Security & Privacy.

How it is beneficial

Using the evidence based evaluation metrics of improved health parameters of the communities through this model, iKure is lobbying to change national health policies to make holistic healthcare solutions that treat the root cause of diseases, rather than just treat individual illnesses by medicine or surgery, the accepted paradigm of healthcare in India.

It can be used by Pharma companies wanting to market-test their product, public health networks such as WHO and government organisations that are looking to understand what kind of treatments are efficacious and can be plugged together with regard to specific epidemics (saving data collection costs).

Leveraging the capacity of WHIMS, hospitals and healthcare providers can become more efficient through analyzing the vast amount of operational data collated over time in the hospitals.

Harnessing the right information at the right time is critical in the medical field. This technology can help doctors to quickly and easily access relevant patient information, including medical history and body stats like blood pressure, heart rate, and blood glucose levels. Analyzing this time series data will help in making clinical decisions in real time. This will tremendously improve clinical outcomes, oversights and patient care.